The April 2008 issue of Scientific American has an interesting article on "The Color of Plants on Other Worlds" (only part of the article is available for free).

The article looks at what factors influenced the color of plants on Earth, models such conditions on hypothetical Earth-like planets in habitable zone around various Types of stars (including F, G, K, and M), particularly the light spectrum on the surface and underwater on such a world, and then makes some educated guesses about how plants would absorb that light for photosynthesis.

Lastly, it speculates on what signatures of such life we could see by planet finder telescopes.

And interesting thought experiment.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

In a funny side note, the tag line of the advertisement that was in the header was 'Go Green'. That rather cracked me up in light of the nature of the article.

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So, will environmentalists on other planets say things like "Go Blue!"?

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Hey, read that article at the library.

Interesting, looking at their charts, a red star will give most of it's energy in the IR spectrum whereas a white star will give most in its UV. So, does this mean that you won't get a sun burn swimming on a world orbiting a red dwarf and you will definately burn swimming under a type F star?


Also, they stated a goldy-locks zone for organisms underwater orbiting a young red dwarf star, which is 9 feet. Enough to protect against flares and to get enough solar radiation, that is for photosynthsis. Now, I propose organisms that float as close to the surface as possible. In the event of a flare, those that survive, multiply rapidly and the die off is a boon for organisms below the surface (these are all mircobes BTW).

Any world close enough to have liquid water on a red star will be tidally locked, so I propose a massive dark matterial near the side facing the star, being black algae.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

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